Most memberships aren't struggling because they offer too little. They're struggling because they offer too much. In this episode, I break down a recent strategy session with my client Matt, whose membership had four tiers, an overwhelming content library, and way too much decision friction in the buying process. We simplified everything: two tiers instead of four, one central hub for connection, and a searchable workshops library. Less than a month after implementing, he had 21 new signups and $2,600 in new monthly recurring revenue. I also share why personalization belongs inside the membership, not before someone buys, and how Matt uses an onboarding quiz plus AI and the Circle MCP to build personalized 3 month roadmaps for new members. If your membership feels complicated or convoluted, this one is for you.

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Most people that are running memberships just have too much going on.

They have too many tiers, they have an overwhelming amount of content.

They're serving lots of different levels at once.

And because it's such a complicated ecosystem, it causes all kinds of issues.

Maybe you're struggling with growth, struggling with your marketing, getting people in the door.

You might be struggling with engagement, or maybe the membership itself has sort of like, plateaued and it's become really hard to.

To grow.

These are super common problems.

And a lot of the times the complexity of the offer or the structure or the design of the membership experience is what's causing these problems.

It feels kind of counterintuitive because we think that we need to add more value, add more things in order to make it work better.

But a lot of times, simplifying is actually the answer.

So recently we did a strategy for my client, Matt.

He has a membership that had actually, at the time, four different tiers, a lot of content, and he was serving a lot of different levels.

And so we gave him the strategy to reduce, reduce, reduce.

We broke it down from four tiers to two tiers.

He centralized a ton of content, so killed a bunch of separate spaces, built one hub for most of the connection and ways that people would ask questions and support one another.

And we updated the library so that it was more of like a searchable workshops library instead of an overwhelming amount of content for them to sift through and figure out what was actually for them.

So amazing results because he implemented this strategy less than a month later.

He had over 21 people sign up and a total of 2,600 new monthly recurring revenue, which is amazing and really exciting around, like, what is possible for growth when you just simplify, which, like, hopefully this is the best news you've ever heard.

Like, do less.

No, but there has to be a lot of intention in the way that it's designed.

Like, we want to simplify and we want to think a lot about personalization and the member journey.

So the other piece we did like, yes, simplifying, but then we also made a recommendation for how to do more personalization because he had lots of different levels coming in.

And what was happening is, and this is really common, is that with the tiers, like the four tiers, in the beginning, he's trying to do the personalization and the member journey before they're inside the membership.

So it's like, pick your path.

And I've.

I've seen this problem a couple times recently, which is why I wanted to record this Episode where it's like, okay, before they even buy, we're giving them lots of information about the different levels that they could choose.

And maybe there's a quiz or something that tells them which, which package is right for them or which tier is right for them.

And in this case it was just causing overwhelm.

But if you speak to the right person and you bring them in, then personalize it, then their experience is so much better because they feel bought into the general concept of exactly what they're joining.

They are bought into the transformation.

They're like, yes, this is what I need.

This is the kind of help I.

And these are the kind of people I want to meet.

And then once they're in, then part of their onboarding journey, part of their member journey is to get a personalized plan.

So in the case for Matt, he has an onboarding quiz that new members fill out and then he uses AI plus the circle MCP to create personalized 3 month roadmaps for each of them super fast.

And he built that out super incredible.

But the onboarding and personalization flow, this is a really common one that we work with a lot of our clients on, is like, how do we personalize different paths for your different members so that they come back to this feeling of oh my gosh, this was absolutely designed for me.

What I love about the implementation of this strategy is we're really doing two, two parts here to like grow the membership.

There's the front end, make it less confusing to buy.

We're reducing the tiers or reducing decision friction in the buying process and we're making it really clear what they get and we're not gatekeeping certain information at different levels, which is part of what the problem was here around like programming, you only get certain things and that just confuses people.

And they're not sure which tier they should buy and they end up just dipping.

So we don't want to create too much decision friction.

So on the front end we're like fixing the offer and the marketing strategy, but on the back end we're also improving the overall member journey.

We're making it easier for them to find things.

So we're improving retention and engagement.

And because of that we're going to see more member results.

Where they're talking about their results, they're talking about what's working.

It's going to increase word of mouth growth.

And so because we're focusing on how do we improve the overall experience of the membership, we're also going to see growth.

There so I'm excited.

I mean in one month like crazy results.

And so this can only compound and I can't wait to measure, you know, over time.

How does this improve retention with the more personalization that Matt has added.

If you're listening to this and you're thinking oh my gosh, my membership is definitely way too complicated or convoluted or I've added way too much in here and what should I do about that?

We would love to help.

Matt only did our introduction strategy offer and obviously has had incredible results and he's not the only one.

So there's lots of people that just do strategies with us.

Maybe they come back later.

My goal is that they absolutely crush it and then they come back later for support with management and growth strategy and even more things.

And that's what happens.

And so we would love to help you with your strategy.

It really takes another set of eyes to look at this stuff and say like yeah, this is over complicated or we can simplify this and to look at the data with you because of course we want to be making data driven decision around your retention data.

What people are saying, how they're engaging and really looking at it, getting a fresh set of eyes on it.

So what we do is we audit and then we do the strategy all one session and then a deliverable that you get so that you can go and implement.

So if this is interesting at all to you, there is a link in the show notes to book a discovery call with my team.

We would love to speak with you, we would love to do this work for you and I hope this was helpful.

Like look at your no matter where you're at, look at your community and think about how can I simplify this to make the experience better for my members and to make the offer less confusing for people that might want to join.

Okay, until next time, keep building.